Christopher Texidor v. United States

I. Whether United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997), which permits sentencing courts to consider conduct underlying charges of which a defendant was acquitted, remains constitutionally valid in light of the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that the jury is the exclusive constitutional arbiter of criminal facts, and whether an acquittal — rendered by the constitutionally designated fact-finder under the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard with full adversarial protections — forecloses any subsequent use of the acquitted conduct at sentencing for any purpose that increases the sentence above what the convicted conduct alone supports. II. Whether 18 U.S.C. § 3661, which authorizes sentencing courts to consider unlimited information about a convicted person’s background, character, and conduct, can constitutionally be applied to permit consideration of conduct underlying charges of which the defendant was acquitted, where the jury’s verdict is the constitutional resolution of the factual question submitted and where the statute’s application overrides that resolution through judicial fact-finding under a standard lower than the Constitution requires for criminal punishment. III. Whether the Sentencing Commission’s November 2024 amendment to USSG § 1B1.3, which restricts the use of acquitted conduct in calculating the guideline range but leaves its use as a § 3553(a) discretionary factor entirely unrestricted — with acquitted conduct re-entering through USSG § IB 1.4 and 18 U.S.C. § 3661 — creates a constitutionally meaningful distinction or merely a formal prohibition with no functional effect on the sentence actually imposed, as demonstrated by the sentencing court’s own express admission in this case.